ELIZA
MONDAY MORNING, I start awake, disoriented. Where am I? A hazy scene around me: green-and-white-striped curtains, a luxurious California King bed. But then the furniture turns to mist. I open my eyes, and I am in my canopy bed in my bedroom. Where else would I be?
Someone pounds at the door. Judging by the lack of noises to right the situation, I am guessing Kiki and Steadman aren’t home. I sit up slowly, a sticky, rotting taste in my mouth. There is one message on my phone from Laura: Uh, I got this weird voice mail from this woman who said she’s your mother? She wants us not to publish your book? Nothing from my mother, though—I don’t know why I’m even checking. Nothing from Bill, apologizing for her. Nothing from Lance the forensic psychologist. Nothing from Richie the bartender.
More pounds. I glance in the mirror at myself and try to tamp down my wild, witchlike hair. Mascara is caked around my eyes, and I must have reapplied lipstick in between drinks number seven and eight, because it makes a wobbly circle around my general mouth region, hitting a good bit of my teeth, too. The knot on my head where I fell on Friday has morphed over the weekend from a garish blackish-purple to an even uglier greenish-yellow. It still hurts when I touch it.
I dart into the bathroom and scrub my face raw. With the makeup gone, my eyes are tiny, my lips puffy, my cheeks the color of raw cauliflower. I smooth my hair down my forehead and arrange it so it’s kind of covering up the bruise. I down twenty varieties of vitamins in hopes that their wonder-powers will counteract all the alcohol. Then I take a deep breath and listen, hoping the knocking has ceased. If anything, whoever it is has begun to pound harder.
What if it’s Leonidas down there? What if he knows I’m alone and has come to hurt me for looking through his phone?
I part the curtain at the top of the stairs and peer out the window. The Batmobile is in the driveway. I’m so astonished that I laugh. I would have thought that after Friday Desmond would want to be rid of me.
I hurry down the stairs and open the door. I find him in a disarmingly normal black T-shirt, old black jeans, and lace-up boots that are suede and pointed and perhaps like something a minstrel might wear. He cocks his head at me. “Were you slumbering?”
“No, but I was sleeping,” I mutter. “I tossed and turned all night.”
“Up solving your mystery? You should have called me.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I thought you were out of the detective game.”
“Oh, now, I never said I was out for good.”
I remember my hope that he was coming to spin me around to kiss me. I think I’d dreamed about it last night; I have vague flashes of his pointy little face above mine, that thick, glossy hair brushing against my cheek, those little hands deft.
I place my hands in my pockets, and the shock of hair covering my bruise falls out of position and reveals the greenish skin. Desmond notices it and gasps. “What happened?”
“Just a fall.”
“Onto what, someone’s fist?”
He reaches out to touch the gash, but I squirm to the left. Begrudgingly, I tell him about what happened in the parking lot on Friday and that the picture I’d taken was now missing. He looks aghast. “I should have stayed with you! Made sure you got safely into the Uber!”
“Nothing happened to me, exactly,” I say. “Except that I had a panic attack and lost consciousness. And then the police came, and they drove me home.” You know. Totally normal day.
“How intriguing that the assailant deleted the file,” Desmond muses. “It has to be someone who knows something, right? Someone who doesn’t want you to figure out who Leonidas was speaking with.”
I nod—this is what I’ve deduced, too.
Desmond places his hands on his hips. “You know, you can subpoena phone records. We should explain this to the police.”
I make a face. “On what grounds? It’s not like I have much proof besides eavesdropping on Leonidas’s conversation.”
“Hmm.” Desmond looks chagrined. “We should try and get proof.”
I nod, though I have no idea how we could do this. “I’m pretty sure a number I know was on that call list. I’ve tried all weekend to remember, but I can’t.” I sigh. “Even better, I wish I could just remember who I was talking to that night in Palm Springs. And maybe even who pushed me into the pool.”
Desmond paces the room, then suddenly snaps his fingers. “I have an idea.”
I suck in my stomach. There’s something propositional about his voice. “What?”
“I’ve been reading up on how to unlock memories. Sometimes, the key is to go back to the scene of where you lost them. They can return just by smelling the same smells or hearing the same sounds. We should go back to the Tranquility.”
“What, today?”
“I have the day off.” His gaze goes to my bruise again. “Unless you’re feeling too infirm.”
I run my tongue over my teeth, and all at once they feel smooth and clean. It’s not like I have anything else to do today besides panic. The Tranquility looms in my mind like a book I don’t want to open because I’m not sure I want to know how it ends, but maybe Desmond is right. Maybe everything will slot into place if we go.
“Okay,” I say. At the very least, it would be an opportunity to retrieve my car from the resort’s garage. I’d thought my family was going to chariot it back for me, but as far as I know, it’s still there.
Once again in the Batmobile, Desmond plays a favorite song from a CD complication in his disc player: something heavy with mandolins. I play one next: Sleater-Kinney. I watch his expression, suddenly curious of what he thinks. “Interesting,” he says, and finds another song on his CD. A lute, some mewling. I keep my expression neutral, but I notice him watching me in the same way I was watching him. I burst out laughing.
NPR, sports radio, Spanish for a few minutes, even though neither of us really knows the language. We follow an old VW Beetle, a pink stretch limo with Happy Chicks painted on the side, a bright blue bus of old people. Desmond waves to the old people, and many of them wave back. Toward the back of the bus, a younger, shadowed face appears, and I flinch. I’m looking at an image of myself.
“Are you all right?” Desmond asks, because I must have made some sort of noise.
The bus lags a little behind us. The angle of the sunlight changes, and the face in the window is gone. There is sweat spilling down my neck into my underwear. I chew viciously on a fingernail. “I just thought I saw something. Someone.”
“Who?”
I press my hand hard against my knee. Me, I want to say, but I know that’s impossible. Out loud: “I don’t know. But it was someone who looked like they knew me, maybe.”
By the time we pull up to the Tranquility’s sweeping front drive, I am feeling sweaty and starving and maybe like this isn’t a very good idea. I still don’t really know Desmond. Who’s to say he isn’t dangerous? Should I have alerted Bill and my mother? They’d seemed so offended that I’d disappeared to Palm Springs the last time without telling them.
We stop the car, and a valet immediately appears to relieve us.
“Good afternoon,” Desmond says dramatically, using a fake, Dracula accent. He tosses the valet his keys, and I notice he has a wimpy throw. I bet he was picked last for teams in junior high gym.
“Sweet ride,” the valet says, handing us a ticket. “You two staying with us?”
Desmond glances at me with one eyebrow raised. “Shall we? Perhaps a suite par deux?”
My smile wobbles, but I’m still feeling so out of it, so I snap, “Of course not. And I think your French is wrong.”
He walks inside, and I reluctantly follow. Desmond tries to take my arm and I let him for a few seconds before dropping it. Halfway across the floor, the smell of tequila wafts into my nose, and I swoon. All at once, pieces of memories that I don’t know what to do with rush my brain. I see myself, younger, sitting on a barstool, laughing at someone. Me and a person, lounging on a couch together. Leonidas?
Desmond touches my arm. “Is it happening?” he asks, excitedly. “Are you remembering?”
“I don’t know,” I murmur, taking a deep breath to try to steady my legs.
We walk past an indoor desert garden of waterfalls, cacti, and terra-cotta sculptures. The atrium is fragrant with floral succulents. A potpourri of people in southwestern garb probably purchased in the gift shop lounge on big chairs in front of a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks a desert vista.
“This is truly an oasis,” Desmond says, tenting his fingers. “I used to come here as a child with my father. It’s why I bring my team down here—I always feel so centered in this place. You, too?”
I blink hard, the memories swirling around my head suddenly gone. “Maybe.”
“Did you come here as a child as well?”
“I . . . think so.”
“You think?”
It feels like something I was sure of only days ago, maybe even minutes ago—how I know of this place, my history within it, and why I’d chosen to come here on the day of my almost-drowning. It’s not like it’s a Ritz-Carlton. It’s not like it’s featured regularly in Travel + Leisure. It’s one of those places you have to know about to find. We must have come here when I was younger: my mom, Gabby, Bill, and me. I distinctly remember hiking up that trail out back, yelling my name between the two canyons to hear the echo. It’s just that what happened in between is missing.
But this isn’t what I need to focus on right now. I need to think about my most recent visit. If I can just retrace my steps, I can remember who hurt me. I picture myself in the lobby. Walking over to the front desk to check in. I recall the smooth key card in my hand. I remember a woman in a crisp white shirt sliding my American Express card back across the counter with a tight smile. I remember taking a mint from a dish and popping it into my mouth. “Would you like to book any spa services, miss?” the woman had asked me, but I’d shaken my head. No massages for me. No facials or manicures. So what had I come here to do?
Drink. And drink heavily. But why? Was it because I knew, subconsciously, the tumor was back? I wish it were that simple. Could something have set me off, then? What had happened that day before I went? I try to think. I probably woke up like I always did and choked down vitamins and a smoothie. I’d probably talked to Kiki. I had received the boxes containing copies of my book that day. Could that be something?
“Come on,” I say, tugging Desmond’s arm. “Let’s go to the bar I was at before the pool.”
We look at a map on the wall; the Shipstead is through a hallway, past a couple of gift shops and the spa, down an elevator, and past the fanciest restaurant. Outside, the pool beckons, the cheerful orange cabana cloths flapping in the light wind. A few people are lying on the chaises, reading books. The blue water glistens. I’m surprised it’s open, actually. It sounds ridiculous, but I was hoping they would have closed it off after I’d been fished out. A man glides in the water with a baby buoyed by a large round float. The baby’s smile is all gums. She splashes her father giddily. Neither of them have any idea I’d been lying at the bottom nine days ago.
I wonder what the father would do if I told him.
It’s three p.m., a dead time especially on a Monday, and the Shipstead’s bartender, who’s wearing a sailor suit, grimaces as he wipes the counter by the bottles. The wallpaper features diagrams of how to tie different sailing knots. The room smells like Old Spice.
Desmond surveys the room, then looks at me. “Do you remember where you were sitting?”
I pick a stool at the bar, though I have absolutely no recollection. The bartender places coasters imprinted with jaunty navy-blue anchors in front of us, and asks if we’d like a menu. Desmond asks what sort of absinthe they’ve got. The bartender names a brand, to which Desmond makes a face.
“Amateurs,” he whispers, but he orders it anyway.
I consider ordering nothing—I already feel naturally tipsy—but then I blurt out, “A stinger.” It feels like the right answer. I’d had one that night.
The bartender nods. When he reaches for the martini glass, he has to stand on his tiptoes. A heady scent of deodorant wafts from his underarms.
“You aren’t Richie, by any chance, are you?” I call to him.
He turns around and blinks at me. “No. Sam.”
“Is Richie . . . here?”
“Nope.” He adds various liquids to a stainless shaker. “Not today.”
At least Richie actually exists. “Do you know when he’s around next?”
The bartender frowns. He’s handsome, but he’s short, and the bell-bottomed one-piece just makes him look even smaller, almost like a child. He has tattoos of numbers in a random pattern on every finger. A phone number? Birth and death dates? “Are you a friend of his?”
“No, I was at this bar two Saturdays ago, and Richie was my bartender. I’m trying to figure out who I was sitting next to,” I say in the most pleasant, sane voice I can muster. “I spoke to the person for a while that night, but I didn’t catch her name. I was hoping Richie could help me.”
There’s half a smile on the bartender’s face. As he sets down our drinks, he looks sympathetic. “That’s happened to me a few times, too. I hit it off with someone, it seems like something, and he leaves before I get his phone number. You could place an ad on Craigslist, you know. Missed Connections. Ever read those? Cashier at the 76 on Main Street, I’m the tall thin guy who comes in in the mornings for hot chocolate and Red Bull. You waved at me, maybe you’ll see this. You could do something like that.”
My mouth, I’m sure, is hanging open. “Oh, I’m not trying to get a date out of this.”
The bartender blinks at me. “Oh,” he says, woodenly. He abruptly walks away to serve an older couple who has just come in.
Desmond pours the green liquid over his absinthe. “I used to post on Missed Connections. I never got a response. I don’t know anyone who ever got a response. Kind of makes you wonder why it still exists.”
I point at him playfully. “I thought social media made you sad.”
“Snapchat makes me sad. Selfies make me sad. Thinking that a text message serves as a love letter makes me sad. Posting on Missed Connections, that was poetry.”
“You’re so weird.” I down my cocktail and gag. The stinger tastes bitter, unlike things I usually drink, but the flavor doesn’t conjure any new memories. Desmond drinks slowly, tapping his toe at the smooth, sax-heavy jazz number on the stereo. The old couple sips wine and talks quietly. The bartender ignores us, making a big deal out of cleaning the barware. In the distance, a maid feverishly vacuums the rug, her head bopping to music over her headphones.
“So tell me how you think it transpired,” Desmond says in a low voice. “You came into this bar. Is that right?”
I look around. “I think so. And I spoke to someone. I’m sure of it. Someone who said you’ve got to get ahold of yourself.” I squeeze my eyes shut tightly. “If only I knew who.”
“Do you think it’s someone you knew?”
“I feel like it, yes. But I was also surprised to see the person here. It felt very . . . unexpected.”
“So maybe it was Leonidas. I mean, if you’d already broken up, you wouldn’t expect to see him, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Let’s assume it is him. He sits next to you at the bar. You have a conversation. He says you’ve got to get ahold of yourself. Does that seem right?”
“It could be . . .”
“And then what? What do you think you talked about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your breakup? Maybe you were really upset? Maybe that’s why he said you had to get a grip?”
“Maybe . . .”
“But what got you out to the pool?” Desmond muses. “Leonidas must have said something to get you to head out there. You needed some air? Or maybe he wanted to be . . . intimate?”
He gets a goofy look on his face when he says it, and I blush. “I doubt it. I was feeling afraid, not sexy.”
“Okay. So maybe Leonidas says something that frightens you. Like he’s going to hurt you. You run out to the pool. You have a bigger argument, maybe about your breakup. He pushes you in.” He smiles triumphantly.
“Maybe,” I say, emptily.
“Maybe not?”
I swivel and look at the pool out the window. Now, a couple of kids are splashing each other in the shallow end. A woman in a black bikini dips in her long legs near the diving board. “I feel like the person who pushed me was a woman.”
“Oh.” Desmond frowns, studies his cocktail napkin, which is an illustration of various knots, like the wallpaper.
“But maybe my memory is wrong. I mean, Leonidas knows me. He was talking about me on the phone. It fits.”
“Or maybe it doesn’t,” Desmond says. “I mean, I met him, Eliza. He seemed . . . Well, he seemed like a big dumb dog, no offense. So maybe it was someone else.”
Deep down, I agree with him. It would be easy if Leonidas was the answer, but it doesn’t feel right.
We don’t say anything for a while. Someone is using a leaf blower outside. To blow what, I wonder. We’re in the desert.
“Did you ever hear the story about the starlet who was murdered here in the sixties?” I ask Desmond, to break the silence. He shakes his head, so I explain about the mix-up. When I’m done, Desmond looks chagrined. “Poor Diana Dane,” he cries.
“What are you talking about? She’s the one that lived. It’s Gigi Reese you’re supposed to pity. Someone killed her, and they didn’t even care who. Her mystery was never solved.”
“I know, that’s sad, too, but it’s an expected sort of sad. But imagine what Diana Dane had to deal with. All those articles talking about her death. Do you think all of them were nice? Maybe someone snuck something disparaging in there, since she wouldn’t be around to defend herself.”
“I’m pretty sure they all sung her praises.”
“Oh.” Desmond blots his face with a napkin. “Still, the idea of someone mistaking someone else for you is spooky. I wonder if she had any moments of thinking, Hey, if everyone thinks I’m dead, perhaps I am! Public opinion can sway all sorts of truths.”
“You’re missing the point of my story.”
“Or maybe she thought, Hey, this gives me an out. I can leave Hollywood. Start another life. Go on a crime spree—no one will catch me because they all think I’m dead.”
“But she loved Hollywood. She didn’t go on a crime spree.”
Desmond sips his drink. “Huh. There’s so much more possibility to her story if she decided to run with the whole dead thing.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling more and more annoyed. “The point is that poor, dead Gigi Reese went unnoticed. The point is that some people are remembered only because they resemble someone else.”
“If I had a double, I might go on a crime spree,” Desmond says dreamily.
“No you wouldn’t.”
“Okay, I probably wouldn’t. But I’d do something unexpected. For me, I mean.”
I try to imagine what would be out of character for Desmond. Joining a fantasy football league, maybe. Adopting a child. I wonder about the anti-Eliza. I would take up residence at an ashram. I would breathe deeply and worry little.
Another stinger arrives even though I haven’t signaled for it. I suck it down, wincing once again at the flavor. Who on earth would drink a cocktail with crème de menthe? The opening bars of a song peal through the room, and my head shoots up. “Low Rider.” It’s the same song I heard when I was here. I go very still, concentrating on each note, trying to picture the last time I’d heard the song. I might have been sitting on this very stool, looking out at this same view. And when I turned my head—
Fear ripples through me. I see a shadow. I shoot to my feet. “What?” Desmond says, sliding off his stool, too.
“Someone wants to hurt me.”
Desmond’s eyes widen. “Who?”
But I don’t know. I have only been given this thought and only this thought exactly. And yet the fear is liquefied, coursing through my veins. Something in this bar frightened me that night. I’d hurtled off the stool just like I have today, and I looked for the first exit I could find. And that’s what I do now, too. Except my body is pointed in the other direction today, so the exit I lunge for is the one into the hallway back to the hotel. I stagger there, arms outstretched like a zombie, the Muzak piping through the speakers abnormally loud.
“Eliza!” Desmond cries, stumbling behind me. “What are you—”
I hear the bartender protest something about being paid for the drinks, but I don’t turn, and Desmond doesn’t, either. All I know is that I have to get off this floor. Away. Whatever I feared weeks ago is still here, now. I punch the elevator button, and, mercifully, the doors open immediately. I get in and press the button for the lobby. Desmond leaps inside as the doors are closing.
“What’s going on?” he asks me, panting. “Eliza, what’s happening? Tell me what you’re thinking? Who are you afraid of? What did you see?”
My brain twists and bucks. I am scrambling for more, and I’m not getting any answers. I press my thumbs to my eye sockets until I see stars. When I peek at Desmond again, there is a nervous, uncertain look on his face.
“Someone you’ve met before?” he tries. “Who does this person look like?”
Like me, I want to say, but I don’t know where this has come from. I certainly didn’t come up with it. But then I remember that face on the bus. That face in the window at my mother’s house. My face, my face, my face. Why do I keep seeing myself? I look at Desmond blankly, lost. My jaw feels unhinged from my skull.
The elevator dings. The door slides open on the lobby level. I shrink back at the throng of people waiting to get in, but Desmond leads me by the hand and sits me down on a leather chair near a large saguaro cactus that is somehow growing indoors.
“Eliza,” he says, his voice cracking. “You’re burning up.”
“I’m okay.” Sweat prickles down my spine.
“No, you’re not. Talk to me, please. Who did you see? Why did you run away?”
“I don’t know.” And then, suddenly, the shakes come on. My whole body rolls with them; they travel all the way down to my fingertips, sharp little zingers. I chatter my teeth. I feel my eyeballs curl inward. I’m seizing, I can feel it. I shut my eyes and feel my head hit the leather ottoman. I can hear Desmond shouting above me, but I can’t do anything to get to him or talk to him. Just don’t call other people over, I wish I could tell him. Just let me ride this out. Something tells me I’ve had a seizure in public before. Something tells me I got too much attention for it.
And then, suddenly, it’s over. My eyes focus again. Sound rushes back, and I have the use of my voice. I sit up, noting that I’ve left a pool of sweat from my hair on the ottoman. When I look at Desmond, though, he is staring at me in horror. Several other people stand over me, including a few men in hotel garb. “Is she okay?” one of them is saying. Beyond them, a few guests crane their necks. I hear the words Ambulance, and Fainted, and Drunk.
Someone clears his throat behind us. It’s the bartender from the Shipstead; he’s brought the bill. Desmond stands, leads him a few steps away to take care of the transaction. I sit on the ottoman, staring at the cross-hatchings in my palm, feeling cold, slimy embarrassment.
Desmond says nothing as he sits back down. “Sorry about that,” I mutter, finally, because I feel like I must say something.
He pauses before speaking. “I want to call an ambulance.”
I feel a bolt of shock. “Are you kidding?”
“Maybe you need a professional. Someone who can help you.”
I curl my hands into fists. “I can’t believe you.”
“Eliza. You were terrified. You need to unlock what was scaring you.”
“So you want to commit me? Just like everyone else?”
He looks horrified. “Of course not! I just want to know what’s wrong!”
But maybe that’s not what he means. It could be just a tactic to soften me up. I turn my back. “You don’t know me at all, Desmond. So don’t pretend that you do.”
He scuttles around to face me again. “I didn’t mean for you to think—”
“You know how I mentioned a brain tumor?” I interrupt. “Well, I think it’s still hanging around. Messing with my head. Causing me to say things and remember things I have no control of. Causing my body to move in strange ways. It’s not some psycho tic, okay? I’m not crazy.”
His mouth drops open. “Oh, Eliza. Oh dear. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, sorry doesn’t really cut it. Not now.” This is unfair—I’m saying all this because I’m embarrassed and vulnerable. But I need him to leave me alone. Pretend it never happened. Coming here was a terrible idea.
“What can I do?” he pleads. “How can I help? Maybe you do need an ambulance, then.”
“I can handle it.” I cross my arms over my chest, feeling a wall come up around me. He tries to get me to look at him, but I don’t.
“I’m smitten by you, Eliza,” Desmond says. “You’re like the Lady of the Lake. I don’t understand a lot about you, but I’d spend the rest of my life figuring you out. I want to help you however I can, including figuring out what scared you so much. I want to save you.”
“I don’t need saving.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re strong. You’re impenetrable. But you want to know who hurt you, don’t you? I think your brain and body just gave you a huge clue. Like I said, I’ve been reading up on memory, and I think just being here is working.”
I glare at him. “How do I know you didn’t hurt me, Desmond?”
He draws back. The color drains from his face. “W-what?”
“You just happen to be walking by and fish me out of the pool on the night of a storm? You just happen to have seen someone running away? You could be saying that to take the heat off yourself.”
His hands are at his mouth. “Why would I do such a thing?”
“Because you’re strange. Maybe I was bitchy to you in the bar. Maybe I made fun of you when we were younger and I don’t remember you. You were absolutely the kind of person I would have made fun of.”
Desmond shakes his head, his eyes unblinking. “You have to believe me. I didn’t push you. I would never.”
I pointedly turn away. I really don’t think Desmond pushed me. It’s probably good I threw it out there, but I know it isn’t true. I just wanted to hurt him. It’s too hard for me to have someone care this much. I have a coiled-up feeling that things with Desmond will end badly, disappointingly, devastatingly, and maybe it’s just better to push him away before he pushes me. Maybe I’ve been in this situation before. With Leonidas, perhaps. But more likely with my mother.
Desmond’s shoulders heave, and then he stands. “Let’s have dinner and forget all about this.”
“No way,” I say stiffly. “I’m getting my car out of the garage, and I’m leaving.”
“Don’t be crazy! You just had an episode! You’re in no state to drive!”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Absolutely not. I’ll drive you.”
Desmond reaches out and grabs my arm, but I wheel around and give him the most searing glare I can muster. “I said no.”
I march across the lobby. I feel tipsy from the stinger, and not in a good way. Memories and feelings are bumping into one another in my head. Me pushing Desmond away, me feeling afraid, that seizure—a half-formed picture is taking shape in my mind, except it’s still under a drop cloth. I wonder if I’ll ever get to see what it is.
In the driveway, the same valets wait at their post. The one who took Desmond’s car notices me and snaps to his feet. “Need the Batmobile, miss?” Then he chuckles. “Man, I’ve always wanted to say that.”
I shake my head angrily. I’m even furious at Desmond’s car. “No, thanks. And for the record? It’s basically a glorified Buick.”
“Did you have a nice stay at the Tranquility?” he asks, not missing a beat.
I consider this question. Across the drive, people are going on a hike in the blazing sun. Cacti jut out on the plateau. They look picturesque and innocuous from two hundred yards away, not like they really are: spiny, unyielding, mostly dead.
“Not really,” I grumble over my shoulder, halfway to the parking garage. I’m not sure I’ve ever had fun at this place. Not once in my life.